I know, yet more on the weight thing - I'm beginning to become a bit of a scratched record, huh?
Well, the thing I wanted to mention mainly was that I think my main problem is going to be time. See, I've basically come to the conclusion that exercise is going to be the real key.
Or more specifically, I need to walk myself thin. The change to the diet thing of not including bread has proven to be a real pain in the arse. I think I need to take a more level-headed approach.
After all, when I started looking at the calories, my discovery was actually that I was basically taking in the recommended 2,500 calories a day (well, maybe a little more or a little less, depending on the day), where I had thought I was taking in a lot less. The main reason for this was because I was eating an entire home-made loaf a day.
In other words, if I just stop being a fussy bugger and have that loaf across 2 days, even though on the second day it will be a little dry, then that essentially drops me below the 2,500 calories (although I will have to be careful what I put in said sarnis). I can still have "loaf replacement" in the evening, but it avoids the real hassle I've been giving myself of having to prep said meal replacement in the morning. That has the added value of freeing up a bit more time in the morning, so I can walk a bit further.
Also, my other thing is to be more careful as to what I eat at weekends. I wasn't really being very strict with myself at weekends, but if I'm more sensible then that shouldn't be a problem.
Anyway, the point is that the pedometer has shown me (a bit like the scales) that the situation wasn't as bad as I'd feared, but there's a long way to go. Roughly speaking, I need to double the amount of walking I'm currently doing to make any sort of inroads. And really that's just to get me onto a normal amount - I then need to build up even more.
Which isn't to say I'm doing a lot at the moment, although I reckon I have already doubled what I used to do. Currently, I'm getting straight up when my alarm goes off and going for a quick 15 minute walk. I'm hoping to bump that up to maybe half an hour eventually, but for now I think it's an okay amount.
It then turns out that on some days of the week, when I have stuff to do at lunch, I already do a reasonable number of steps. The problem, however, is that most days I don't have anything to do, so I don't do very many steps at all. My current thought is that I can simply do a quick walk around the car park at the start of lunch and that will bump the steps up a bit.
Again, we're not talking about a huge distance or a long time walking, but the whole point is that it all adds up. So I can also maybe do the long walk around the car park thing again when I'm going home - again, only a couple of minutes, but every little helps.
The key though is going to be doing something in the evening, after work. My initial thought is to repeat my short, 15 minutes walk as soon as I get back.
But, as mentioned, the problem is going to be time. If I'm spending 15 minutes walking, then you can add on a good 10 minutes of faff (changing clothes, catching my breath, etc) as well, and I've already got massive backlogs of stuff to do - magazines to scan, DVDs and TV to watch, games to play, books and manga to read...
I guess the point is that doing those things instead of stuff that involves physical exercise is a big part of what got me into this mess in the first place.
Friday, 20 August 2010
Thursday, 19 August 2010
that much, eh?
Well, both my new bathroom scales and pedometer turned up earlier in the week.
First off, the scales then - is my weight as bad as I'd feared? No - I weigh well within the limit of these scales. Does that really count as good news? Not really, no.
I'm not going to say what I actually weigh, mainly out of embarrassment, but also because I'm not taking what I measured as being a proper measure yet. The key to weighing yourself regularly is to set a day and time and to always measure it under the same circumstances (i.e. same clothes).
It doesn't really matter when those are, but the key is the consistent repetition, and I think the best time for me to do it will be at the weekend. So what I measured earlier in the week could be high or low - I mean, not to the extent of a stone or anything, but it's important not to go weighing myself randomly or I'll get all sorts of spurious readings that could end up disheartening me.
The really bad news side of things is that I really do need the extra weight measurement that these "fat bastard" scales go up to. In fact, actually, by the looks of things I need exactly half of the extra measurement they provide. If I tell you that standard scales weigh up to 20 stone then that probably gives you some idea of the problem I've got.
Not that the 20 stone represents a good weight you understand. There's something called "Body Mass Index" (BMI) and the idea of this BMI thing is it gives you an easy figure to work out how heavy you are. It's calculated using your height and weight and the idea is that it's banded, so if you're number is between x and y then you're a healthy weight, if it's lower than x you're underweight and if it's above y then you're overweight.
The most useful aspect of BMI is that that figure is consistent - if you're 3 foot tall and have a BMI of 20 then that means the same thing as if you're 8 foot tall and have a BMI of 20. Anyway, the real point is that in order to simply be classified as obese I need to get below 20 stone. At my current weight I'm what's known as morbidly obese, which is a doctory weigh of saying I'm going to kill myself by being this fat.
My first goal is therefore to get under 20 stone, and I'm hoping to do that by Christmas. It's a lot to loose and if I'm to achieve it I really need to stick with both the new exercise regime and the diet, but it's a steady loss. The key is this "lifestyle change" thing - not sitting on my fat arse all day, but regularly going for walks and generally increasing my activity levels.
Which is why I got the pedometer.
Apparently, there's quite a lot of evidence that they work as good motivators - when you can actually see how many steps you're actually taking, and knowing how many you need to do, it's not surprising it encourages you.
I've mainly been experimenting with it so far this week. Part of it seems to be accurately setting your step length, and I've been having a few problems with that. See, the difficulty is that when I try to actually measure it, I don't walk normally.
It recommends that you do a set number of steps (10) and measure that, to give the average. But the problem is when I do those ten steps I end up not walking like I normally do. I keep "striding" - taking deliberately long steps.
However, I think I've managed to get it so that it's about right now and it seems pretty accurate when I'm doing proper walking. That's relatively easy to check, because I can just mentally count the number of steps I take along a particular stretch and then see how many its recorded, and it seems reasonably accurate.
However, it seems to go a bit bonkers when I'm just bimbling. I was laying on my bed, watching telly and went to the loo and back for a piss and it recorded something like 40-odd steps. The actual distance is something in the order of 5 metres, so 10 metres there and back and my stride length is about 60cm, so it should only be about 16 or 17 steps.
I think the problem is because of the changing height and the weird movements when I'm wandering around in that way. I guess what that means is that I can use the pedometer to measure proper walking, but in terms of bimbling it's probably a case of take as a fixed amount every day.
First off, the scales then - is my weight as bad as I'd feared? No - I weigh well within the limit of these scales. Does that really count as good news? Not really, no.
I'm not going to say what I actually weigh, mainly out of embarrassment, but also because I'm not taking what I measured as being a proper measure yet. The key to weighing yourself regularly is to set a day and time and to always measure it under the same circumstances (i.e. same clothes).
It doesn't really matter when those are, but the key is the consistent repetition, and I think the best time for me to do it will be at the weekend. So what I measured earlier in the week could be high or low - I mean, not to the extent of a stone or anything, but it's important not to go weighing myself randomly or I'll get all sorts of spurious readings that could end up disheartening me.
The really bad news side of things is that I really do need the extra weight measurement that these "fat bastard" scales go up to. In fact, actually, by the looks of things I need exactly half of the extra measurement they provide. If I tell you that standard scales weigh up to 20 stone then that probably gives you some idea of the problem I've got.
Not that the 20 stone represents a good weight you understand. There's something called "Body Mass Index" (BMI) and the idea of this BMI thing is it gives you an easy figure to work out how heavy you are. It's calculated using your height and weight and the idea is that it's banded, so if you're number is between x and y then you're a healthy weight, if it's lower than x you're underweight and if it's above y then you're overweight.
The most useful aspect of BMI is that that figure is consistent - if you're 3 foot tall and have a BMI of 20 then that means the same thing as if you're 8 foot tall and have a BMI of 20. Anyway, the real point is that in order to simply be classified as obese I need to get below 20 stone. At my current weight I'm what's known as morbidly obese, which is a doctory weigh of saying I'm going to kill myself by being this fat.
My first goal is therefore to get under 20 stone, and I'm hoping to do that by Christmas. It's a lot to loose and if I'm to achieve it I really need to stick with both the new exercise regime and the diet, but it's a steady loss. The key is this "lifestyle change" thing - not sitting on my fat arse all day, but regularly going for walks and generally increasing my activity levels.
Which is why I got the pedometer.
Apparently, there's quite a lot of evidence that they work as good motivators - when you can actually see how many steps you're actually taking, and knowing how many you need to do, it's not surprising it encourages you.
I've mainly been experimenting with it so far this week. Part of it seems to be accurately setting your step length, and I've been having a few problems with that. See, the difficulty is that when I try to actually measure it, I don't walk normally.
It recommends that you do a set number of steps (10) and measure that, to give the average. But the problem is when I do those ten steps I end up not walking like I normally do. I keep "striding" - taking deliberately long steps.
However, I think I've managed to get it so that it's about right now and it seems pretty accurate when I'm doing proper walking. That's relatively easy to check, because I can just mentally count the number of steps I take along a particular stretch and then see how many its recorded, and it seems reasonably accurate.
However, it seems to go a bit bonkers when I'm just bimbling. I was laying on my bed, watching telly and went to the loo and back for a piss and it recorded something like 40-odd steps. The actual distance is something in the order of 5 metres, so 10 metres there and back and my stride length is about 60cm, so it should only be about 16 or 17 steps.
I think the problem is because of the changing height and the weird movements when I'm wandering around in that way. I guess what that means is that I can use the pedometer to measure proper walking, but in terms of bimbling it's probably a case of take as a fixed amount every day.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
synecdoche
Whut?
I have to admit I was contemplating leaving that single, misspelled, played-out-net-meme of a word as the entire review for Synecdoche, because it was pretty much my initial reaction. My problem is that since then it's kind of haunted my brain, occupying spare wetware cycles and leading me to either feel like I understand it or don't really get it in equal measure.
Part of the reason for this flip-flopping is that it's massively ambitious, but also massively confusing. It's also very abstract and has more than a touch of self-indulgence about it. If Kaufman is projecting (like all writers and creators) at least some of himself into the main character then what are we to make of things like the "Genius" grant and the fact several women seem to throw themselves at him?
But on the flip-side, he doesn't give that main character anything resembling an easy ride. Caden Cotard (more on that name in a moment) is a theatre director who, when we join him, is neurotic, physically falling to bits and married to a woman who wants out of the relationship big time.
From there on, things don't really get any easier and there's a melancholic, life is full of disappointment, regret, sadness, pain and longing feel to the whole film. Even when he gets this Genius Grant and is given an apparently limitless bucket of money to create whatever he wants, Caden fails to ever actually turn his proposed play into reality. A play is for performance to an audience and at no point does his play ever acquire an audience.
Instead, in its attempt to capture all of life, it becomes like the serpent eating its tail, acquiring ever more actors and layers such that there even end up being actors to play him on multiple levels - there seemed to be actors playing moments from his life that happened, as well as someone playing him as the director of the play.
Which is both clever and confusing at the same time.
It becomes even more confusing towards the end when the actor playing the director him is a woman. And when they do the graveyard scene of burying his mother, this female director decides to ramp things up into an at-once over-the-top but rather profound exaggeration that somehow works even better than the original. It becomes a weird statement that the female actor playing the director version of him is better at directing his own life by making it surreal in what is an already very surrealist reality.
I was struck actually by all sorts of parallels. There's a famous Shakespeare quote that runs something along the lines of "All the world's a stage and the people merely players" and that seems to be the play that Caden is trying to create. There's even one point where Caden says something to the effect that no-one is an extra - everyone is the lead character of their own lives.
Another parallel was with Tristram Shandy. In the Tristram Shandy books, Tristram is trying to write his autobiography, but every day of his life he manages to cover takes an inordinate amount of time to write. Therefore, he's acquiring more days to write about than he has the capacity to write about. Again - Caden's play expands to encompass life, but life is so big it can never be captured ("The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy").
And I feel like there's loads more - that name, Caden Cotard, for example. Cotard Delusion is apparently a condition where the person believes they are dead or don't exist or they have lost organs and in many ways, that's Caden - he's obsessed with death and how bits of him are either broken or not working.
But I didn't know that before I saw it on the internet looking up Synecdoche for this review. Which sort of encapsulates my dilemma about the film - there's bits during it that could have helped me understand that I was ignorant of, but as I discover them I understand the film a bit more.
So I'm left with the slightly weird situation of having found it a little boring and long winded whilst watching it, but slowly coming to enjoy it more some time after.
I have to admit I was contemplating leaving that single, misspelled, played-out-net-meme of a word as the entire review for Synecdoche, because it was pretty much my initial reaction. My problem is that since then it's kind of haunted my brain, occupying spare wetware cycles and leading me to either feel like I understand it or don't really get it in equal measure.
Part of the reason for this flip-flopping is that it's massively ambitious, but also massively confusing. It's also very abstract and has more than a touch of self-indulgence about it. If Kaufman is projecting (like all writers and creators) at least some of himself into the main character then what are we to make of things like the "Genius" grant and the fact several women seem to throw themselves at him?
But on the flip-side, he doesn't give that main character anything resembling an easy ride. Caden Cotard (more on that name in a moment) is a theatre director who, when we join him, is neurotic, physically falling to bits and married to a woman who wants out of the relationship big time.
From there on, things don't really get any easier and there's a melancholic, life is full of disappointment, regret, sadness, pain and longing feel to the whole film. Even when he gets this Genius Grant and is given an apparently limitless bucket of money to create whatever he wants, Caden fails to ever actually turn his proposed play into reality. A play is for performance to an audience and at no point does his play ever acquire an audience.
Instead, in its attempt to capture all of life, it becomes like the serpent eating its tail, acquiring ever more actors and layers such that there even end up being actors to play him on multiple levels - there seemed to be actors playing moments from his life that happened, as well as someone playing him as the director of the play.
Which is both clever and confusing at the same time.
It becomes even more confusing towards the end when the actor playing the director him is a woman. And when they do the graveyard scene of burying his mother, this female director decides to ramp things up into an at-once over-the-top but rather profound exaggeration that somehow works even better than the original. It becomes a weird statement that the female actor playing the director version of him is better at directing his own life by making it surreal in what is an already very surrealist reality.
I was struck actually by all sorts of parallels. There's a famous Shakespeare quote that runs something along the lines of "All the world's a stage and the people merely players" and that seems to be the play that Caden is trying to create. There's even one point where Caden says something to the effect that no-one is an extra - everyone is the lead character of their own lives.
Another parallel was with Tristram Shandy. In the Tristram Shandy books, Tristram is trying to write his autobiography, but every day of his life he manages to cover takes an inordinate amount of time to write. Therefore, he's acquiring more days to write about than he has the capacity to write about. Again - Caden's play expands to encompass life, but life is so big it can never be captured ("The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy").
And I feel like there's loads more - that name, Caden Cotard, for example. Cotard Delusion is apparently a condition where the person believes they are dead or don't exist or they have lost organs and in many ways, that's Caden - he's obsessed with death and how bits of him are either broken or not working.
But I didn't know that before I saw it on the internet looking up Synecdoche for this review. Which sort of encapsulates my dilemma about the film - there's bits during it that could have helped me understand that I was ignorant of, but as I discover them I understand the film a bit more.
So I'm left with the slightly weird situation of having found it a little boring and long winded whilst watching it, but slowly coming to enjoy it more some time after.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
a ped-o-meter, not a paedo-meter
Following on from yesterday, I've also ordered a pedometer.
The idea with these little machines is that they count the number of steps you take. This is important because apparently, if you want to maintain an active lifestyle, you need to do about 10,000 steps a day.
This apparently works out to be about 5 miles a day, but it does include all the steps you take. So things like walking to the bathroom or walking out to the car are also included in those steps - it's not just steps of "deliberate" exercise.
Anyway, the point is that I'm pretty sure I must do less than a thousand steps. I'd be amazed if I'm walking a mile just bimbling around like I normally do. I've therefore ordered the pedometer to see just how far I'm actually walking.
I've heard that some of them aren't very accurate, but I guess even if it isn't accurate it'll be consistently inaccurate, if that makes sense. In other words, if it's always 10% off then it will still allow me to track increases, I just won't know the exact amount of the increase.
The reason I'm focused on walking is that it's apparently one of the best exercises you can do. It's relatively low impact, both in the sense that you're not subjecting your body to lots of physical impacts and also you're not making your heart work too hard. It's still a fairly reasonable cardiovascular workout though and is apparently very good for lowering things like pulse rate and blood pressure.
Also, apparently, your leg and bum muscles are some of the biggest in the body, which means that it's a good way to burn calories, rather than simply increase muscle mass like some exercises are intended to. By this measure, that apparently means cycling and running are also very good - probably cycling is the best given that it can be high activity without the thumping impact of running, but then I'd need a bike and I don't have one, plus cycling on the roads is something that pretty much fills me with abject terror.
However, with walking I also quite like the idea that it doesn't look like I'm exercising. Having a profundity of very wobbly bits, one of the things that I find off-putting about most exercise is that people will stare at me.
If I'm simply going for a walk I'm doing an every day thing and am just going somewhere, so people won't stare too much. Well, they always stare when you're as fat as I am, but they won't stare more, if you see what I mean.
Was that all convincing?
I'm hoping that by reminding myself of this sort of stuff regularly it'll stop me from giving up like I usually do.
The idea with these little machines is that they count the number of steps you take. This is important because apparently, if you want to maintain an active lifestyle, you need to do about 10,000 steps a day.
This apparently works out to be about 5 miles a day, but it does include all the steps you take. So things like walking to the bathroom or walking out to the car are also included in those steps - it's not just steps of "deliberate" exercise.
Anyway, the point is that I'm pretty sure I must do less than a thousand steps. I'd be amazed if I'm walking a mile just bimbling around like I normally do. I've therefore ordered the pedometer to see just how far I'm actually walking.
I've heard that some of them aren't very accurate, but I guess even if it isn't accurate it'll be consistently inaccurate, if that makes sense. In other words, if it's always 10% off then it will still allow me to track increases, I just won't know the exact amount of the increase.
The reason I'm focused on walking is that it's apparently one of the best exercises you can do. It's relatively low impact, both in the sense that you're not subjecting your body to lots of physical impacts and also you're not making your heart work too hard. It's still a fairly reasonable cardiovascular workout though and is apparently very good for lowering things like pulse rate and blood pressure.
Also, apparently, your leg and bum muscles are some of the biggest in the body, which means that it's a good way to burn calories, rather than simply increase muscle mass like some exercises are intended to. By this measure, that apparently means cycling and running are also very good - probably cycling is the best given that it can be high activity without the thumping impact of running, but then I'd need a bike and I don't have one, plus cycling on the roads is something that pretty much fills me with abject terror.
However, with walking I also quite like the idea that it doesn't look like I'm exercising. Having a profundity of very wobbly bits, one of the things that I find off-putting about most exercise is that people will stare at me.
If I'm simply going for a walk I'm doing an every day thing and am just going somewhere, so people won't stare too much. Well, they always stare when you're as fat as I am, but they won't stare more, if you see what I mean.
Was that all convincing?
I'm hoping that by reminding myself of this sort of stuff regularly it'll stop me from giving up like I usually do.
Monday, 16 August 2010
walk the earth, my friend
I decided over the weekend that I was going to start walking.
A few weeks (or was it months?) back - roughly when the weather started to perk up a bit - I started doing walks on Sunday afternoons. This lasted for a little while and I even had what I thought was a really good route worked out.
The route was about 2 miles or so, which isn't a huge distance, but one of the key points about it was that the last stage involved a really steep bit of about half a mile. The meant it was quite decent exercise for someone who is horribly out of shape like me, but also didn't take forever.
However, my main problem I encountered was timing. As the summer got going I started to get a nasty clash - both F1 and MotoGP races tend to start at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and go on for about an hour and a half. This was right when I'd made the slot for walking, so I kept finding myself making the "oh, I'll fit it in next week instead".
But of course I didn't, so I basically stopped do the walks.
So what's different this time?
Well mainly, my plan is to take a very short walk every morning. For about the last 2 years I've been getting up at about 6:45 and going into work very early. Quite why I do this when I spend that first hour basically browsing the web, I don't know, so instead I've decided I'll go for a short sharp walk first thing and not worry about getting in quite so early.
And it really is a short walk - about 15 minutes, so probably less than a mile. But that's part of the aim - by doing shorter walks for time being I'm hoping I can build up. My hope is that I may then be able to do a short walk some evenings as well.
I also think I've hit upon a strategy that allows me to basically replace my bread consumption during the week. I'll still bake myself a fresh loaf at the weekend, partly as a treat and partly as I can control what and when I eat a lot more easily at the weekend.
I'm still too embarrassed to say what I replaced the bread with, but I think I'm feeling okay about admitting I want to loose weight. Previously I was simply saying it was about being a "bit fitter" and while I still want that (it'd be so nice to go up stairs without getting totally of breath) I can admit that a big part of it is being morbidly obese (no matter how fit you are if you were giving a piggy back to someone who weighed the same as you up those stairs, you'd be out of breath too).
As such, I ordered a set of bathroom scales to actually weight myself and determine the extent of the problem. I know it's going to be horribly scary - the scales I've ordered are "XL" if you will and I've still got a feeling I'll be over their maximum weight. And I'm not kidding there - I genuinely think that even though they measure way above what normal scales do I'll weigh more than that.
A few weeks (or was it months?) back - roughly when the weather started to perk up a bit - I started doing walks on Sunday afternoons. This lasted for a little while and I even had what I thought was a really good route worked out.
The route was about 2 miles or so, which isn't a huge distance, but one of the key points about it was that the last stage involved a really steep bit of about half a mile. The meant it was quite decent exercise for someone who is horribly out of shape like me, but also didn't take forever.
However, my main problem I encountered was timing. As the summer got going I started to get a nasty clash - both F1 and MotoGP races tend to start at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and go on for about an hour and a half. This was right when I'd made the slot for walking, so I kept finding myself making the "oh, I'll fit it in next week instead".
But of course I didn't, so I basically stopped do the walks.
So what's different this time?
Well mainly, my plan is to take a very short walk every morning. For about the last 2 years I've been getting up at about 6:45 and going into work very early. Quite why I do this when I spend that first hour basically browsing the web, I don't know, so instead I've decided I'll go for a short sharp walk first thing and not worry about getting in quite so early.
And it really is a short walk - about 15 minutes, so probably less than a mile. But that's part of the aim - by doing shorter walks for time being I'm hoping I can build up. My hope is that I may then be able to do a short walk some evenings as well.
I also think I've hit upon a strategy that allows me to basically replace my bread consumption during the week. I'll still bake myself a fresh loaf at the weekend, partly as a treat and partly as I can control what and when I eat a lot more easily at the weekend.
I'm still too embarrassed to say what I replaced the bread with, but I think I'm feeling okay about admitting I want to loose weight. Previously I was simply saying it was about being a "bit fitter" and while I still want that (it'd be so nice to go up stairs without getting totally of breath) I can admit that a big part of it is being morbidly obese (no matter how fit you are if you were giving a piggy back to someone who weighed the same as you up those stairs, you'd be out of breath too).
As such, I ordered a set of bathroom scales to actually weight myself and determine the extent of the problem. I know it's going to be horribly scary - the scales I've ordered are "XL" if you will and I've still got a feeling I'll be over their maximum weight. And I'm not kidding there - I genuinely think that even though they measure way above what normal scales do I'll weigh more than that.
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